1.24.2003 ||>
This has been... a week. A really big.... week. I don't think I've had a suckier week actually. I remember being so happy in Nukus, and I'm always happy in Tashkent and Chirchiq, why can't I be happy at my site? I love Uzbekistan, I love the people and the public transportation. Russian isn't as ugly for me now as it was before. Why, oh why do I have the most f-ed site on earth. So I came back from Nukus with bronchitis, and I was having trouble breathing for the past two weeks, and feeling really bad, but in a good mood anyway. Then my counterpart (who will now be referred to as the Psycho Bitch Monster of Death or PBMoD) started in on me. Have I mentioned lately that anything that comes out of her mouth is offensive? Anyway, she kept putting me down and because I was sick, I really lost it. Really. Lost. It. I yelled at her in front of my students and told her to get out of my classroom. So anyway my Director had us do this conflict-resolution thing. But in this culture, there is really no such thing, so the conflict resolution was more like "resolutely conflictual." She basically let the PBMoD yell at me for and hour. For an hour I sat there with my mouth shut while this crazy bitch yelled. Then I told the director that I was sorry, but that at the same time I was sick and tired of her craziness. It was really depressing. I went home and cried. That was Friday.
Oh, but that's not the end to the story. So I was sitting there in my room, crying and thinking that I want to change sites. I don't want to leave Uzbekistan, not on your life, but I don't want to live where I am anymore. But I am living with a really cool family, so I felt a little guilty. The next day I went to the bazaar and spent 15,000 soum on them in food. Ok, in America, $13 won't buy you much, but in Uzbekistan, you would have to make two trips or get 4 people to hold all that food. And for how much I make a month, it's a lot of money. Anyway, I spent all this money on them, then I go to my room to find that while I was at the bazaar buying food for them, someone stole $3000 soum. So I get a little more depressed, but I didn't say anything about it, because I was already so depressed from the school stuff, I didn't have time to be angry. Then on Wednesday, I left my room unlocked for a couple hours while I ate and watched TV with the kids. I came back and another 2000 soum was stolen from me. 5000 soum is a lot of money. You can buy a lot of things with 5000 soum. So I got a little angry and confronted the people who were in that part of the compound (we call it the "big house") and now no one in the house is talking to me and I'm not talking to them. I think they're a little afraid to talk to me, and I just can't live in a place where people steal from me. It makes me feel like I don't matter to them, they can steal from me because I'm nothing. And it hurts my feelings. I hate this place. I hate it.
The Russian phrase for being in a bad mood is literally "I have no mood." I think that is so true right now. I have so little mood that it's in the negative digits. But don't worry, I still love the country and I still want to stay. I'm on my way right now to a place where I know people want me and won't steal from me.
